Deadly Waters
by GeneralJellyfish
Summary: Pez really wants to set the world on fire. (T for swearing/coarse language)
1. Chapter 1

The flames danced and leapt in the air, reaching hungrily for anything that they can consume to fuel their wrath.

"Pez."

The plastic recoiled like it can feel the heat, wrinkling into a ruche around the burn. She watched with motionless eyes and brings the flame in again. This time she held it on until a black wisp of smoke curled upwards, eddying in the late fall air like the perfect strokes of an artist.

"Pez."

In seconds a yellow flame had consumed it entirely. She flew to open the window as the acridness of the fumes stung her eyes into motion and made her cough. When she turned back it is simply black and fragile, its flexibility lost. Then her face cracked into a sly grin. Already her mind was searching her 'home' and school for more things to burn. With one strike of her match they would never be the same again, it was a similar thrill to the one she had when she made her first maze in woodwork, but so very much easier.

"Pez, stop day-dreaming about burning Bobofit's stuff." A voice whispered in her ear. "No violence today, remember?"

The slightly manic grin faded from 'Pez's' face as her mind came out of its pyromanic fantasy, now forced to once again endure the inescapable screaming and shouting of the snot-nosed children of Yancy Prep. Now scowling fiercely, her ire directed at everyone and thing in general, Pez wondered for the millionth time what kind of shit-for-brains ninny thought it would be a good idea to shove 40 or so 'trouble' kids onto the one bus, and send them on a field trip to a museum. A museum, of all places.

A flash of red in the corner of her vision brought her attention back on track, and Pez was reminded of the true source of her irritation and violent intention.

"I'm going to kill her." The boy next to her muttered, the same one that had broken her reverie with his whispered warning. She raised a dark eyebrow at his mumbled threat, briefly feeling a flash of amusement.

"No violence today, remember?" She mocked sardonically, slightly miffed she had been called out for merely thinking about setting the girl aflame, whereas he could make death threats.

Sea-green eyes peaked out somewhat sheepishly from underneath jet black hair, only the slightest hint of apology present in the softening of his clenched jaw. But all the same, he shrugged his shoulders in a 'what-can-you-do' sort of way and Pez rolled her eyes.

All the way into the city, the two had put up with Nancy Bobofit, the freckly, redheaded kleptomaniac girl, hitting his friend Grover in the back of the head with chunks of peanut butter-and-ketchup sandwich.

Grover was an easy target. He was scrawny. He cried when he got frustrated. He must've been held back several grades, because he was the only sixth grader with acne and the start of a wispy beard on his chin. On top of all that, he was crippled. He had a note excusing him from PE for the rest of his life because he had some kind of muscular disease in his legs. He walked funny, like every step hurt him, but don't let that fool you. You should've seen him run when it was enchilada day in the cafeteria.

As Nancy Bobofit continued throwing wads of sandwich that stuck in his curly brown hair, Pez knew and she knew I couldn't do anything back to her because I was already on probation. The headmaster had threatened me with death by in-school suspension if anything bad, embarrassing, or even mildly entertaining happened on this trip.

Not that she particularly cared about the scrawny boy, but seeing the afore-mentioned chunks fly over her own head distracted Pez from fantasising all the different ways she could get of the trip – the more, explosive the better.

"It's okay guys. I like peanut butter."

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you: Grover Underwood, the biggest push-over prissy there ever was.

"That's it." The boy started to get up, but Underwood reached through the seats pushed him back into his seat.

"You're already on probation, Percy" Underwood reminded him. "You know who'll get blamed if anything happens."

Another sandwich chunk flew and landed in his hair, followed by ugly snickering and giggling from behind.

Underwood looked at Percy reassuringly.

Percy glanced at Pez in desperate frustration.

Bobofit chortled disgustingly.

And Pez sighed.

"Stand down, Jackson." _What had she become? _"I'll take care of it." _Some sort of do-gooder?_

Underwood's face paled tremendously and it was Percy's turn to sigh.

"No setting her on fire." He warned, stern sea eyes boring into her own.

A wicked grin flickered across her face, manic, like an innocent flame about to spark a wild fire. "No promises."

And she turned her deadly gaze upon the now – quite rightfully – terrified kleptomaniac.

Looking back on it, Pez wished she had set the bitch on fire right then and there. In-school suspension would've been nothing compared to the mess she and Percy were about to get themselves into.

Mr. Brunner led the museum tour.

* * *

| 0.1 |

* * *

To be completely honest, Pez couldn't remember most of the tour. Admittedly, she had been excited when she learned they would pass the weaponry section, but Mr. Brunner had just rolled on past it and called the group to keep up. She had scowled heavily when, after she had lingered longingly, the crippled man had turned a knowing and stern eye on her, forcing her to trudge dejectedly behind an obedient Percy. He then rode up front in his wheelchair, guiding us through the big echoey galleries, past marble statues and glass cases full of really old black-and-orange pottery.

It blew her mind that this stuff had survived for two thousand, three thousand years.

Honestly, what kind of moron dedicates their life to keeping this shit intact?

It just made her want to break it all.

As Pez lost herself in her imaginary world of vandalism, Percy almost reflectively caught her arm and forced her twitching fingers away from the thousand-year-old pottery.

"Pez, no."

"Pez, _yes_."

"No. Bad Pez."

"Yes_. __Good _Pez."

After a brief stare off, Percy rolled his eyes and merely dragged her back to the rest of the group, where Mr. Brunner gathered them around a thirteen-foot-tall stone column with a big sphinx on the top, and started jabbering on about how it was a grave marker, a stele, for a girl about our age and blah blah blah. She wasn't really paying attention, especially when he started on the carvings, but she stayed silent for Percy – who had , in her opinion, an unnatural interest in the stuff. Not like it made a difference though, Pez pondered, as the rest of the class were nattering to each other in none too quiet tones, and every time Jackson told them to shut up, the other teacher chaperone, Mrs. Dodds, would give him the evil eye.

Mrs. Dodds was this little math teacher from Georgia who always wore a black leather jacket, even though she was fifty years old. She looked mean enough to ride a Harley right into your locker. She had come to Yancy halfway through the year, when their last math teacher had a nervous breakdown.

Which was by no fault of Pez's, she assures you.

. . . well, maybe a little bit.

From day one she had figured Percy to be the devil-spawn. She would point her crooked finger at him and say, "Now, honey," real sweet, and everyone knew he was going to get after-school detention for a month. It also helped that no matter how hard the old bat tried, she could never catch Pez in the act of mischief. But, while that was cool and all, her aforementioned redeeming qualities were overshadowed by her love of Nancy Bobofit, and . . . well, Pez's feelings have already been made clear for that particular brat.

One time Jackson had been blamed for one of Pez's pranks and after Dodds had made him erase answers out of old math workbooks until midnight, he'd told his two friends that he didn't think Mrs. Dodds was human. Underwood had looked at him, for some reason serious, and said, "You're absolutely right."

Mr. Brunner was still talking about Greek funeral art.

Pez wondered if they made stone burial alters her size.

Stifled snickering guffaws sounded from behind.

Her eye twitched.

Pez wondered if the Greeks ever considered mass burnings.

You know, to save time and effort.

Apparently, Jackson's last straw had been snatched by an angry short guy, because when Nancy Bobofit snickered something about the naked guy on the stele, he turned around and said, "Will you shut up?"

Pez imagined it came out louder than he meant it to.

The whole group laughed. Mr. Brunner stopped his story.

Thank Satan for that.

"Mr. Jackson," he said, "did you have a comment?"

Pez could practically feel the heat of Jackson's red face from where she was standing. He said, "No, sir."

Mr. Brunner pointed to one of the pictures on the stele. "Perhaps you'll tell us what this picture represents?"

Looking at the carving, the young pyromaniac had no idea why Jackson would suddenly seem so relieved, but each to their own.

"That's Kronos eating his kids, right?"

"Yes," Mr. Brunner said, for some reason not satisfied. "And he did this because ..."

"Well..." Percy racked his brain to remember. "Kronos was the king god, and-"

"God?" Mr. Brunner asked.

"Titan," he corrected himself. Pez couldn't see the difference. "And ... he didn't trust his kids, who were the gods. So, um, Kronos ate them, right? But his wife hid baby Zeus, and gave Kronos a rock to eat instead. And later, when Zeus grew up, he tricked his dad, Kronos, into barfing up his brothers and sisters-"

"Eeew!" said one of the girls behind them.

Wimps.

"-and so there was this big fight between the gods and the Titans," Jackson continued, "and the gods won."

Someone snickered from the group.

Behind them, Nancy Bobofit mumbled to a friend, "Like we're going to use this in real life. Like it's going to say on our job applications, 'Please explain why Kronos ate his kids.'"

"And why, Mr. Jackson," Brunner said, "to paraphrase Miss Bobofit's excellent question, does this matter in real life?"

"Busted," Grover muttered.

"Shut up," Nancy hissed, her face even brighter red than her hair.

At least Nancy got packed, too. One thing Pez appreciated about Mr. Brunner – when it didn't hinder her plans – was the only one who ever caught Bobofit saying anything wrong. He had radar ears.

Percy thought about his question, and shrugged. "I don't know, sir."

"I see." Mr. Brunner looked disappointed, and a hot wired treaded itself through Pez. It started in her throat, winding itself into her vocal box, then travelled down, wrapping painfully tight around each rib. She felt the heat of it start to overheat the rest of her body, reaching her fingers and toes. She only half payed attention to the crippled man's explanation of gods and titans and cannibalism. "Well, half credit, Mr. Jackson. Zeus did indeed feed Kronos a mixture of mustard and wine, which made him disgorge his other five children, who, of course, being immortal gods, had been living and growing up completely undigested in the Titan's stomach. The gods defeated their father, sliced him to pieces with his own scythe, and scattered his remains in Tartarus, the darkest part of the Underworld. On that happy note, it's time for lunch. Mrs. Dodds, would you lead us back outside?"

The class drifted off, the girls holding their stomachs, the guys pushing each other around and acting like doo-fuses.

Pez, Jackson and Underwood were about to follow when Mr. Brunner said, "Mr. Jackson."

He knew that was coming.

He told Grover to keep going. He didn't bother trying to convince Pez.

Neither did Mr. Brunner.

"Sir?"

Percy often complained to his friends that Mr. Brunner had this look that wouldn't let you go - intense brown eyes that could've been a thousand years old and had seen everything. Personally, Pez just thought the boy was way to easy to guilt trip.

She would know, she's done it enough.

"You must learn the answer to my question," Mr. Brunner told him quite seriously.

The hot wire hadn't receded. If anything, at the old man's words, it grew hotter and coiled tighter, almost painfully ripping apart her insides.

"About the Titans?"

"About real life. And how your studies apply to it."

"Oh."

"What you learn from me," he said, "is vitally important. I expect you to treat it as such. I will accept only the best from you, Percy Jackson."

Percy wanted to get angry, so very wanted to, as the guy pushed him so hard. But it was so hard to get truly pissed, as the guy – for some reason – really believed in him. Pez, however, had no such reservations.

She glared at him.

Yeah, sure, it was kind of cool on tournament days, when he dressed up in a suit of Roman armour and shouted: "What ho!'" and challenged them, sword-point against chalk, to run to the board and name every Greek and Roman per-son who had ever lived, and their mother, and what god they worshipped. But Mr. Brunner expected him to be as good as everybody else, despite the fact that he had dyslexia and an attention deficit disorder and he had never made above a C- in his life. No – he didn't expect him to be as good; he expected him to be better. And, Jackson had lamented to Pez, he just couldn't learn all those names and facts, much less spell them correctly.

Jackson mumbled something about trying harder, while Mr. Brunner took one long sad look at the stele, like he'd been at this girl's funeral.

He told the two to go outside and eat their lunch.

Percy left.

Pez stayed rooted.

The little pyromaniac wasn't one for having an abundant amount of friends. She wasn't one for having a few friends either. She wasn't really one for friends – or people – in general. She finds them irritating and hopeless, and wished at least twice a day that something would just come and wipe out the entire human race. But she tolerated Jackson. In fact, she would admit to no one but herself, she liked to tolerate him. One would even call them 'acquaintances'.

"Yes, Miss Chernov?"

Everyone at Yancy knew not to fuck with Pez. Though she may not quite reach 5ft in height, people had learned to fear the sight of her. Never did she have to worry about elbowing her way through a crowd to get to class – people would usually elbow others in a scrambled effort to get out of her way. A single hooded glance from her dark eyes would send even the most hardened of adults nervously shuffling away. And, lord help the perpetrator, should the young girl for some reason be antagonised, personal items and clothing mysteriously tended to go up in flames.

Nobody wanted to get on her bad side. And so, there were three simple rules.

Don't talk to her.

"Hello? Miss Chernov?"

Don't irritate her.

"Miss Chernov?"

And don't, mess with anyone she called an 'acquaintance'.

"Petra, was there something you needed?"

Her eye twitched imperceptibly.

She smiled sweetly.

"No sir." Her eyes hardened and her lips stretched wider, a feral look that caused the temperature to drop. "Nothing at all."

And she turned on her heel, a sharp move that whipped her hair out with her, leaving a faint scent trail as she left.

There was a fourth, unspoken rule.

One that, if broken, was liable to get you signed up for an eternity of pain and suffering.

Don't, under any circumstance, call her 'Petra'.

Mr. Brunner watched the small girl leave, loosening his tight grip from his arm rest and releasing a shaky breath.

He hadn't even realised he'd been holding it in.

* * *

|0.2|

* * *

The class had gathered on the front steps of the museum by the time Pez had joined them, where they could watch the foot traffic along Fifth Avenue.

She briefly payed attention to the huge storm brewing above her, with clouds blacker than she'd ever seen over the city. At first, she figured maybe it was global warming or something, because the weather all across New York state had been weird since Christmas. They'd had massive snow storms, flooding, wildfires from lightning strikes. She wouldn't have been surprised if this was a hurricane blowing in.

But no.

There was something else. Something that made the hairs on her arms stand up. Something that wasn't **right.**

Unsurprisingly, nobody else seemed to notice. Some of the guys were pelting pigeons with Lunchables crackers. Nancy Bobofit was trying to pickpocket something from a lady's purse, and, of course, Mrs. Dodds wasn't seeing a thing.

Hag.

Percy and Underwood had learnt well from previous experience and were sitting on the edge of the fountain, away from the others. They all agreed, a rare occurrence on Pez's part, that maybe if they did that, everybody wouldn't know they were from that school – the school for loser freaks who couldn't make it elsewhere.

"Detention?" Pez heard Grover ask.

"Nah," Percy sighed. "Not from Brunner. I just wish he'd lay off me sometimes. I mean – I'm not a genius."

"Ain't those the truest words to have been spoken."

Jackson merely rolled his eyes as Pez lazily sat on his other side. rover didn't say anything for a while. Then, when Pez thought he was going to give Jackson some deep philosophical comment to make him feel better, he said, "Can I have your apple?"

Percy didn't have much of an appetite, so he let him take it.

Pez watched Mr. Brunner out of the corner of her eyes, parked his wheelchair at the base of the handicapped ramp. He ate celery while he read a paperback novel. A red umbrella stuck up from the back of his chair, making it look like a motorised cafe table.

"What did you want with ?"

Pez blinked. "Mm?"

He repeated his question.

She stared at him for a moment, contemplating how much she actually wanted to say.

_Does she want to admit she had been about to chew out Jackson's favourite teacher for being unfairly disappointed in him and making him feel like shit? . . . Nah, that makes it sound like she cares._

"None of your business, Jackson." She told him airily, swivelling her body around so that she could lie down on the fountain edge and swing her legs onto Jackson's lap. "Not like it concerns you."

_Nailed it._

Percy rolled his eyes as Pez threw her arms over her eyes, not bothering to try and remove her legs from his lap. That would just be a wasted effort. Besides, he thought as her breathing evened out almost immediately, he had seen the bags under her eyes. With one last fond look at his friend's covered and sleeping face, Percy turned back to his lunch, pointedly ignoring Grover's gaze and his own red tipped ears. He was about to unwrap his sandwich when Nancy Bobofit appeared in front of him with her ugly friends - she'd gotten tired of stealing from the tourists-and dumped her half-eaten lunch in Grover's lap.

"Oops." She grinned at him with her crooked teeth. Her freckles were orange, as if somebody had spray-painted her face with liquid Cheetos. Her eyes flickered fearfully as she saw Pez was lying next to him, but soon became confident as she realised the girl was sleeping.

He tried to stay cool. The school counsellor had told him a million times, "Count to ten, get control of your temper." Besides, he didn't want to be the one that woke the sleeping beast. But he was so mad his mind went blank. A wave roared in his ears.

Even in years to come, Percy doesn't remember touching her, but the next thing he knew, Nancy was sitting on her butt in the fountain, screaming, "Percy pushed me!"

Mrs. Dodds materialised next to them.

Some of the kids were whispering:

"Did you see-"

"-the water-"

"-like it grabbed her-"

He didn't know what they were talking about. All he knew was that he was in trouble again.

Pez stirred groggily, her legs finally lifting of Percy's lap as she turned over and curled into herself.

Miraculously, she didn't wake.

As soon as Mrs. Dodds was sure poor little Nancy was okay, promising to get her a new shirt at the museum gift shop, etc., etc., Mrs. Dodds turned on him. There was a triumphant fire in her eyes, as if he'd done something she'd been waiting for all semester. "Now, honey-"

"I know," he grumbled. "A month erasing workbooks."

That wasn't the right thing to say.

"Come with me," Mrs. Dodds said.

"Wait!" Grover yelped. "It was me. I pushed her."

Percy stared at him, stunned. He couldn't believe he was trying to cover for him. Mrs. Dodds scared Grover to death.

She glared at him so hard his whiskery chin trembled. "I don't think so, Mr. Underwood," she said.

"But-"

"You. Will. Stay. Here."

Grover looked at Percy desperately.

"It's okay, man," he told him. "Thanks for trying."

"Honey," Mrs. Dodds barked at the green-eyed boy. "Now."

Nancy Bobofit smirked.

He gave her his deluxe, Pez approved, I'll-kill-you-later stare. Then he turned to face Mrs. Dodds, but she wasn't there. She was standing at the museum entrance, way at the top of the steps, gesturing impatiently at him to come on.

How'd she get there so fast?

One of the things that both Percy and Pez share in common, is that they both have moments like that. It happened a lot, when their brains falls asleep or something, and the next thing they know they've missed something, as if a puzzle piece fell out of the universe and left them staring at the blank place behind it. The school counselor had told them that it was part of the ADHD, their brains misinterpreting things.

Percy wasn't so sure.

Pez just doesn't like the guy.

She doesn't like anyone, really.

Percy went after Mrs. Dodds.

Halfway up the steps, he glanced back at Grover and Pez. Grover was looking pale, cutting his eyes between Percy and Mr. Brunner, like he wanted Mr. Brunner to notice what was going on, but Mr. Brunner was absorbed in his novel.

Pez was still sleeping.

Percy looked back up. Mrs. Dodds had disappeared again. She was now inside the building, at the end of the entrance hall.

Okay, he thought. She's going to make him buy a new shirt for Nancy at the gift shop. But apparently that wasn't the plan.

He followed her deeper into the museum. When he finally caught up to her, they were back in the Greek and Roman section.

Except for them, the gallery was empty.

Back outside, a singular, pale eyelid slid open to reveal a dark eye.

It watched as the curly haired boy desperately motioned to the man in the wheelchair, both wearing similar expressions of apprehension and worry.

It watched as the man quickly packed up umbrella and wheeled himself into the museum entrance.

And it watched as the surrounding students all suddenly stopped, expressions slack and gazes vacant and misty. All except the curly haired boy.

It saw the crippled man return.

It saw the arrival of the perky blonde woman, who had a short and serious conversation with the the permanently seated man.

It saw everything.

It knew.

And when all was said and done

* * *

|0.3|

* * *

Absolute terror ran through Percy's body. He did the only thing that came naturally: he swung the sword.

The metal blade hit her shoulder and passed clean through her body as if she were made of water.

Hisss!

Mrs. Dodds was a sand castle in a power fan. She exploded into yellow powder, vaporised on the spot, leaving nothing but the smell of sulphur and a dying screech and a chill of evil in the air, as if those two glowing red eyes were still watching him.

Percy was alone.

There was a ballpoint pen in his hand.

Mr. Brunner wasn't there. Neither was Mrs. Dodds or the monster. Nobody was there but Percy.

His hands were still trembling. His lunch must've been contaminated with magic mushrooms or something.

Had he imagined the whole thing? He went back outside.

It had started to rain.

Grover was sitting by the fountain, a museum map tented over his head. He had taken the leather jacket Pez had been wearing earlier and draped it over face. Nancy Bobofit was still standing there, soaked from her swim in the fountain, grumbling to her ugly friends. When she saw Percy, she said, "I hope Mrs. Kerr whipped your butt."

He said, "Who?"

"Our teacher. Duh!"

He blinked. They had no teacher named Mrs. Kerr. He asked Nancy what she was talking about. She just rolled her eyes and turned away.

The bewildered boy asked Grover where Mrs. Dodds was.

He said, "Who?"

But he paused first, and he wouldn't look at Percy, so he thought the curly haired boy was messing with him.

"Not funny, man," Percy told him. "This is serious."

Thunder boomed overhead.

Percy saw Mr. Brunner sitting under his red umbrella, reading his book, as if he'd never moved.

He went over to him.

The man looked up, a little distracted. "Ah, that would be my pen. Please bring your own writing utensil in the future, Mr. Jackson."

Percy handed Mr. Brunner his pen. The boy hadn't even realised he was still holding it. "Sir," He said, "where's Mrs. Dodds?"

Mr. Brunner stared at him blankly. "Who?"

"The other chaperone. Mrs. Dodds. The pre-algebra teacher."

He frowned and sat forward, looking mildly concerned. "Percy, there is no Mrs. Dodds on this trip. As far as I know, there has never been a Mrs. Dodds at Yancy Academy. Are you feeling all right?"

Faintly, all the way back at the fountain, Percy heard a yell.

"Who the **fuck **put my jacket over my face? Are you **trying **suffocate me!"


	2. Chapter 2

**2\. A Punnet of Strawberries**

Percy was used to the occasional weird experience, but usually they were over quickly. The twenty- four/seven hallucination was more than he could handle. Pez had watched as, for the rest of the school year, Jackson became convinced the entire campus seemed to be playing some kind of trick on him. The students acted as if they were completely and totally convinced that Mrs. Kerr-a perky blond woman – whom neither friend had ever seen in their lives until she got on their bus at the end of the field trip – had been their pre-algebra teacher since Christmas.

Every so often Pez watched in amusement as Jackson would spring a Mrs. Dodds reference on somebody, just to see if he could trip them up, but they would stare at him like he was psycho.

It got so bad that Jackson almost believed them – Mrs. Dodds had never existed. Almost.

But Underwood couldn't fool him. When Jackson mentioned the name Dodds to him, he would hesitate, then claim she didn't exist. But they both knew he was lying.

Something was going on. Something had happened at the museum.

Pez, of course, agreed with Percy.

A fact that seemed to terrify Underwood.

In the surrounding weirdness that had occurred during and after the field trip to the museum, Percy, not quite trusting Grover, had turned to the only other person that might believe him.

He had spent the entire buss ride looking nervously at everything they passed, anxiously shifting every second. The moment they had rolled to a stop, Percy had leaped out of his seat and snatched a sleeping Pez's wrist, dragging her off the bus and to his dorm room before Grover could shout 'Enchilada'.

He told her everything.

And when he started hyperventilating, for the first time since Percy had met her, Pez voluntarily reached forward and initiated contact.

She had held him in a loose – albeit awkward – hug, occasionally patting his back.

"We'll figure it out, Jackson." She had whispered. "We'll figure it out."

Yeah, not her proudest moment.

Ew, _caring_.

The two had become much closer after that – which basically meant that Jackson spent more time with her, and Pez tolerated his presence a bit better than before.

If she were to be completely honest – a phenomenon in itself – Pez was really worried. While she didn't have much time to think about it during the days, at night, when she knew visions of Mrs. Dodds with talons and leathery wings would wake Jackson up in a cold sweat, she would spend all night thinking.

She thought about a lot of things.

The freak weather that had mysteriously continued since mid-winter; One night, a thunderstorm blew out the windows in her dorm room and a few days later, the biggest tornado ever spotted in the Hudson Valley touched down only fifty miles from Yancy Academy.

Mrs Dodds; Jackson's odd account of the museum incident with the combined fact that nobody seemed to remember her. Pez had never explicitly confirmed to Jackson (or Underwood, the untrustworthy rat) that she remembered the woman, but she did. She remembered everything – things that not even Jackson knew about.

There was also the matter of the museum incident the itself; the anxious moods surrounding Underwood and Mr. Brunner, the strange behaviour – read freaky fucked up horror movie behaviour – of the students and, of course, Jackson's sci-fi experience with the bat hag of a Math teacher.

Her mind never stopped churning.

Even Pez could tell that it was all affecting Jackson, as he got crankier and more irritable most of the time. His grades slipped from Ds to Fs. He got into more fights with Nancy Bobofit and her friends. He was sent out into the hallway in almost every class.

Finally, when their English teacher, Mr. Nicoll, asked him for the millionth time why he was too lazy to study for spelling tests, Jackson snapped. He called him an old sot. Pez wasn't even sure what it meant, but it sounded good.

He had been sent straight to the principal's office.

Pez followed shortly after, due to a strange mix of mocking the 'old sot' and giving him thinly veiled threats. When she finally did get kicked out, she passed his desk and – by far her personal favourite so far – had said; "if you ever speak to or about Jackson like that again, I will rip out your tongue and staple it to your forehead."

She smiled sickeningly sweat at his pale face, and bid him a good day.

Of course, that stunt had earned her at least a month of detentions and several trips a week to the school counsellor.

Jackson kept badgering her. He wanted to know what she had done to deserve such a punishment.

Pez refused to admit she had gotten in trouble purely to get back at the teacher who had hurt her fr- . . . acquaintance.

But there was really no point. It was official: Jackson would not be going back next year to Yancy Academy.

Fine, he told Pez. Just fine.

He was homesick.

All Percy wanted to be with his mum in our little apartment on the Upper East Side, even if he had to go to public school and put up with his obnoxious stepfather and his stupid poker parties.

And yet . . . there were things he'd miss at Yancy. The view of the woods out his dorm window, the Hudson River in the distance, the smell of pine trees. He'd miss Grover, who'd been a good friend, even if he was a little strange. Jackson worried how he'd survive next year without him. He'd also miss Pez.

He'd miss the little pyromaniac a lot.

And to be honest, the little pyromaniac would miss him too.

As exam week got closer, the two teenagers silently agreed that Latin would be the only test they studied for. Pez wasn't really one for studying in the first place, but ever since Mr. Brunner had told Jackson that the subject would be life-and-death for him, the boy had become obsessed. So, with nothing better to do, Pez sat down and suffered the eternal torment.

The evening before their final, Jackson had gotten so frustrated that he threw the Cambridge Guide to Greek Mythology across his dorm room. Pez – haven given up long ago – looked up in faint amusement. She guessed that the words had started swimming off the page, circling his head, the letters doing one-eighties as if they were riding skateboards. That's what they had done for her.

"There's no way I'm going to remember the difference between Chiron and Charon, or Polydictes and Polydeuces. And conjugating those Latin verbs? Forget it!" Percy lamented, pacing the room, feeling like ants were crawling around inside his shirt.

He remembered Mr. Brunner's serious expression, his thousand-year-old eyes. _I will accept only the best from you, Percy Jackson._

Pez sighed internally and shook her head. _Why am I doing this? What makes me care **so damn much. **_She took a deep breath and picked up the mythology book, holding it out to the pacing boy.

"Ask."

Percy froze, gaze locking on the out-stretched book. He'd never asked a teacher for help before. _Maybe if he talked to Mr. Brunner, he could give him some pointers. _

Pez rolled her eyes at his hesitation. "The least you could do is apologise for the big fat F you're going to score on his exam." Jackson glared at her, and she puffed out her cheeks, frustrated that she never seemed to have the right words. "I mean, I'm sure you don't want to leave Yancy Academy with him thinking you hadn't tried."

_It's not like he hero-worships the guy or anything._

Pez kept that part to herself.

Soon enough, the pair were walking downstairs to the faculty offices. Most of them were dark and empty, but Mr. Brunner's door was ajar, light from his window stretching across the hallway floor.

They were three steps from the door handle when voices sounded from inside the office. Mr. Brunner asked a question. A voice that was definitely Grover's said "... worried about Percy, sir."

Percy froze.

Pez immediately dragged Jackson and herself into a darkened doorway.

She knew that he wasn't usually an eavesdropper, but she mentally dared him to try not listen to his your best friend talking about him to an adult.

Percy inched inched closer.

" . . . alone this summer," Grover was saying. "I mean, a Kindly One in the school! Now that we know for sure, and they know too-"

"We would only make matters worse by rushing him," Mr. Brunner said. "We need the boy to mature more."

"But he may not have time. The summer solstice dead-line- "

"Will have to be resolved without him, Grover. Let him enjoy his ignorance while he still can."

"Sir, he saw her, and Pez . . Pez believes him."

"His imagination," Mr. Brunner insisted. "The Mist over the students and staff will be enough to convince him of that."

"But what about Pez, sir?" Underwood asked. "We didn't plan for this."

"No, we didn't." Pez could hear the heavy frown in his voice.

Her fists clenched.

"She certainly has complicated matters. I wasn't sure until now, but . . . Are you certain?"

"Yes, sir. I couldn't tell because of Percy, but-"

"And you're saying she also knows?"

"It's Petra, sir. She could tell you straight to your face, you still wouldn't know."

"Indeed." There was a long pause of silence, and the two eavesdroppers inched even closer. Finally, Mr. Brunner spoke. "We shall have to see, monitor her more. In the mean time, we leave everything as is."

"Sir, I . . . I can't fail in my duties again." Grover's voice was choked with emotion. "You know what that would mean."

"You haven't failed, Grover," Mr. Brunner said kindly. "I should have seen the Kindly One for what she was. Now let's just worry about keeping Percy alive until next fall-"

The mythology book dropped out of Jackson's hand and hit the floor with a thud.

Mr. Brunner went silent.

Her heart hammering, Pez forgot to glare at Jackson as she picked up the book, shoved into at his chest and pushed him back down the hall.

He hesitated.

She remembered to glare.

He ran. Quietly.

A shadow slid across the lighted glass of Brunner's office door, the shadow of something much taller than their wheelchair-bound teacher, holding something that looked suspiciously like an archer's bow.

Pez opened the nearest door and slipped inside.

A few seconds later she heard a slow clop-clop-clop, like muffled wood blocks, then a sound like an animal snuffling right outside my door. A large, dark shape paused in front of the glass, then moved on.

A bead of sweat trickled down her neck.

Somewhere in the hallway, Mr. Brunner spoke. "Nothing," he murmured. "My nerves haven't been right since the winter solstice."

"Mine neither," Grover said. "But I could have sworn . . ."

"Go back to the dorm," Mr. Brunner told him. "You've got a long day of exams tomorrow."

"Don't remind me."

The lights went out in Mr. Brunner's office.

Pez waited in the dark for what seemed like forever.

Finally, she slipped out into the hallway and made her way back up to the dorm.

Jackson was rummaging in his draws looking his pajamas and Underwood was lying on his bed, studying his Latin exam notes like he'd been there all night.

Damnit, no chance of talking now.

"Hey," he said, bleary-eyed.

Pez didn't answer him.

"Hey, Jackson." She called. He looked up, anxiety clear in his sea green eyes. "Did I leave my Latin notes in here?"

He knew she had come to talk to him about what they'd heard, but with Grover there . . .

"Here." Percy said, reaching over and gathering her stuff. "Thanks for helping me study. It helped realise a lot of things."

Pez could've decked him for how obvious he was being.

"Good, 'cause I'm never doing it again."

In spite of his worry, he cracked a grin.

Her lips twitched.

With everything he thought he knew fall to pieces, at least Percy could always count on Pez being a complete and utter bitch.

She turned so he couldn't see the smile playing on her lips, and left the boy's dorm.

She didn't understand what they'd heard downstairs. She knew Jackson wanted to believe they'd imagined the whole thing, but she knew better.

Three things were clear: Grover and Mr. Brunner were talking about them behind their backs. Pez had become a problem of sorts – not in the way she normally is, and for once, not of her own volition.

And Jackson . . .

Jackson was in danger.

* * *

| 0.1 |

* * *

The next afternoon, as Percy was leaving and Pez was finishing the three-hour Latin exam, her eyes swimming with all the Greek and Roman names she was no doubt misspelling, Mr. Brunner called Jackson back inside.

For a moment, Pez was worried he'd found out about their eavesdropping the night before, but that didn't seem to be the problem.

"Percy," he said, his soft voice carrying. "Don't be discouraged about leaving Yancy. It's . . . it's for the best."

His tone was kind, but the words still embarrassed Percy. Even though he was speaking quietly, the other kids finishing the test could hear. Nancy Bobofit smirked at him and made sarcastic little kissing motions with her lips. Pez was glared at Mr. Brunner and clenched her pencil tightly in her first.

If she had started to care about the safety of the boy after the Mrs. Dodds incident, her uncharacteristic protectiveness had double tenfold.

Percy mumbled, "Okay, sir."

"I mean ..." Mr. Brunner wheeled his chair back and forth, like he wasn't sure what to say. "This isn't the right place for you. It was only a matter of time."

Percy eyes stung.

Here was his favourite teacher, in front of the class, telling him he couldn't handle it. After saying he believed in him all year, now he was telling him he was destined to get kicked out.

"Right," he said, trembling.

"No, no," Mr. Brunner said. "Oh, confound it all. What I'm trying to say . . . you're not normal, Percy. That's nothing to be-"

Bang.

Everybody jumped, students scrambling to look busy as Mr. Brunner's attention was captured.

Pez stared blankly at the crippled teacher, her lips pursed and eyes dead.

"Sorry, dropped my rubber. Smacked my head trying to get it."

Percy's eyes flickered to her forehead.

It was unblemished.

Her eyes dared Mr. Brunner to call her out.

"Please, Miss Chernov, try to be more careful next." He said, his mouth turned down in disapproval. He turned to continue his conversation but

. . . Percy, after a great full glance at his friend, was already gone.

* * *

| 0.2 |

* * *

Pez had told Jackson exactly what transpired after he left, and the two spent the rest of the term mulling over the mysterious late night conversation. On the last day of the term, Pez gladly shoved her clothes into her suitcase.

The other girls were joking around, talking about their vacation plans. One of them was going to her family's holiday home in Malibu. Another was cruising the Caribbean for a month. They were juvenile delinquents, like Pez, but they were rich juvenile delinquents. Their daddies were executives, or ambassadors, or celebrities. She wasn't from a nobody family, not by a long shot, but she took every chance to distance herself from them.

They asked her what she'd be doing this summer.

She told them to fuck off and mind their own business, before she their hair on fire.

"Oh," one of them said. "Right . . . Sorry, Petr- Pez! Sorry Pez."

They went back to their conversation and slowly inched away from her.

Oh, how she loved threatening people.

The only person she dreaded saying good-bye to was Jackson, but as it turned out, she didn't have to. He'd booked a ticket to Manhattan on the same Greyhound as she had, so there they were, together again, heading into the city.

Oh, and Underwood was there too.

During the whole bus ride, he kept glancing nervously down the aisle, watching the other passengers. It occurred to Percy – which he whispered to Pez – that the other boy had always acted nervous and fidgety when they left Yancy, as if he expected something bad to happen. Before, Percy had always assumed he was worried about getting teased. But there was nobody to tease him on the Greyhound.

Finally, Pez snapped.

She said snidely, "Looking for Kindly Ones?"

Underwood nearly jumped out of his seat. "Wha-what do you mean?"

Jackson confessed about eavesdropping on him and Mr. Brunner the night before the exam.

Grover's eye twitched. "How much did you hear?"

Pez took vindictive pleasure watching the other boy squirm nervously.

"Oh . . . not much. What's the summer solstice dead-line?"

Underwood winced. "Look, Percy . . . I was just worried for you, see? I mean, hallucinating about demon math teachers . . ."

Pez saw red. "You little-"

"Grover-"

He spoke over the both of them. "And I was telling Mr. Brunner that maybe you were overstressed or something, because there was no such person as Mrs. Dodds, and . . ."

"Oh yeah?" Percy challenged, trying to rein in his anger. "And about 'Pez the Problem'?"

"T-hat's just- she's been acting up more, a-a-and he was asking I could talk to her about it."

Both teenagers looked at the terrified boy.

"Bullshit" / "Grover, you're a really, really bad liar."

His ears turned pink.

From his shirt pocket, he fished out two grubby business cards. "Just take these, okay? In case you need me this summer.

The card was in fancy script, which was murder on their dyslexic eyes, but together, they finally made out something like:

_Grover Underwood Keeper _

_Half-Blood Hill  
Long Island, New York (800) 009-0009 _

"What's Half-"

"Don't say it aloud!" he yelped. "That's my, um ... sum-mer address."

Percy's heart sank. Grover had a summer home. He'd never considered that his family might be as rich as the others at Yancy.

"Okay," he said glumly. "So, like, if I want to come visit your mansion."

Underwood nodded. "Or ... or if you need me."

"Why would I need you?"

It came out harsher than he meant it to.

Pez was so proud.

Grover blushed right down to his Adam's apple. "Look, Percy, the truth is, I-I kind of have to protect you."

Percy stared at him.

Pez burst out laughing.

All year long, he'd gotten in fights, keeping bullies away from him. He'd lost sleep worrying that his friend get beaten up next year without him. He had even – somehow, miraculously – convinced Pez to agree to look out for him. And here he was acting like he was the one who defended me.

"Grover," he said, "what exactly are you protecting me from?"

There was a huge grinding noise under their feet. Black smoke poured from the dashboard and the whole bus filled with a smell like rotten eggs. The driver cursed and limped the Greyhound over to the side of the highway.

After a few minutes clanking around in the engine compartment, the driver announced that they'd all have to get off. The trio filed outside with everybody else.

They were on a stretch of country road – no place Pez would notice if they didn't break down there. On their side of the highway was nothing but maple trees and litter from pass-ing cars. On the other side, across four lanes of asphalt shimmering with afternoon heat, was an old-fashioned fruit stand.

The stuff on sale looked really good: heaping boxes of blood-red cherries and apples, walnuts and apricots, jugs of cider in a claw-foot tub full of ice. There were no customers, just three old ladies sitting in rocking chairs in the shade of a maple tree, knitting the biggest pair of socks Pez had ever seen.

The socks were the size of sweaters, but they were clearly socks. The lady on the right knitted one of them. The lady on the left knitted the other. The lady in the middle held an enormous basket of electric-blue yarn.

All three women looked ancient, with pale faces wrinkled like fruit leather, silver hair tied back in white bandannas, bony arms sticking out of bleached cotton dresses.

The weirdest thing was, they seemed to be looking right at Percy.

He looked over at Grover to say something about this and saw that the blood had drained from his face. His nose was twitching.

"Grover?" He said. "Hey, man-"

"Tell me they're not looking at you. They are, aren't they?"

"Yeah. Weird, huh? You think those socks would fit me?"

"Not funny, Percy. Not funny at all."

The old lady in the middle took out a huge pair of scissors-gold and silver, long-bladed, like shears. Percy heard Grover catch his breath.

"We're getting on the bus," his friend told him. "Come on."

"What?" Percy said. "It's a thousand degrees in there."

"Come on!'" He pried open the door and climbed inside, but Percy stayed back.

Across the road, the old ladies were still watching him. The middle one cut the yarn, and he sweared he could hear that snip across four lanes of traffic. Her two friends balled up the electric-blue socks, leaving him wondering who they could possibly be for – Sasquatch or Godzilla.

Suddenly, Grover popped his head out of the bus, glanced around, immediately panicking. "Where's Pez?"

"Right here."

Both boys jumped, screams dying in their throats as Pez appeared next to them, a punnet of strawberries in her hand.

"Strawberry?"

Percy chuckled at her.

Grover paled even more.

At the rear of the bus, the driver wrenched a big chunk of smoking metal out of the engine compartment. The bus shuddered, and the engine roared back to life.

The passengers cheered.

"Darn right!" yelled the driver. He slapped the bus with his hat. "Everybody back on board!" Once they got going, Percy started feeling feverish, as if he'd caught the flu.

"You alright?" Pez asked him.

Underwood didn't look much better. He was shivering and his teeth were chattering.

"Grover?" Jackson whispered.

"Yeah?"

"What are you not telling us?"

Pez looked between the two in confusion, a half-eaten strawberry inches from her mouth.

Underwood dabbed his forehead with his shirt sleeve. "Guys, what did you see back at the fruit stand?"

"You mean the old ladies?" Pez shared a glance with Jackson. He asked; "What is it about them, man? They're not like . . . Mrs. Dodds, are they?"

The other boy's expression was hard to read, but they got the feeling that the fruit-stand ladies were something much, much worse than Mrs. Dodds. He said, "Just tell me what you saw."

"The middle one took out her scissors, and she cut the yarn."

He closed his eyes and made a gesture with his fingers that might've been crossing himself, but it wasn't. It was something else, something almost-older.

He said, "You saw her snip the cord."

"Yeah. So?" But even as Jackson said it, Pez knew it was a big deal.

Spiders raced lightly across her shoulders.

"This is not happening," Underwood mumbled. He started chewing at his thumb. "I don't want this to be like the last time."

"What last time?" Pez growled.

"Always sixth grade. They never get past sixth."

"Grover," Percy said, because he was really starting to scare him. "What are you talking about?"

"Let me walk you both home from the bus station. Promise me."

It seemed like a strange request to him, but he promised he could.

Pez told him to fuck off.

"Is this like a superstition or something?" Percy asked.

No answer.

"Grover – that snipping of the yarn. Does that mean somebody is going to die?"

He looked at him mournfully, like he was already picking the kind of flowers he'd like best on his coffin.

Pez promptly thumped him on his head.


	3. Chapter 3

**_Reviews:_**

_mothedman: well, you just might see that (wink wink)_

* * *

**Chapter 3: Revealing Truths**

* * *

Confession time: Pez ditched Underwood and Jackson as soon as they got to the bus terminal.

_'Oh, but Pez, that's rude.'_

Shut the fuck up.

Do you really think she cared?

. . . Okay, to be fair, she felt – slightly, **slightly** – bad about leaving Jackson behind, but she was never going to apologise for hiking it out of there when Underwood presented the chance. He was being a little weirdo and freaking Jackson out, looking at the both of them like they were dead, muttering "Why does this always happen?" and "Why does it always have to be sixth grade?"

Fucking weirdo.

Besides, she had plans.

Things to burn and people to stalk.

But first, a pit stop.

After a brief wave goodbye to Jackson, she carefully watched him catch the first taxi uptown.

"East One-hundred-and-fourth and First," he told the driver.

Gotcha.

The taxi sped off and she turned around, starting her journey in the opposite direction.

Let it be said, here and now, for the record of the court, that Pez, is not a completely evil person. Yeah, sure, she liked to burn things. She loved threaten people and hating the world was her favourite pastime, but that doesn't make her evil. No, Pez is merely a teenage girl that liked to do bad things.

She was an expert at doing bad things.

Bad? . . . yes.

But evil? . . no.

So, when Pez regards a person to be so bad that they're the true definition of evil, in heaven, hell and everything in between – and not in the fun way, like her – you'd better believe it.

For example, her mother.

Oh, her _mother._

Pez shoved past the hoards of people on the busy New York sidewalks, a fierce scowl twisting her features and causing civilians to scatter out of her way.

Her **_mother._**

Zoya Chernov.

Disdain dripped from her mind, every memory tainted, each one more vile and horrible than the last.

Her **mother **made it no secret that she hated the girl.

Pez had figured that out from a very young age.

Zoya's bitterness toward her daughter was an extension of her vanity. Even from day one, Pez had been a beautiful baby. As Zoya declined, her daughter blossomed into childhood, more beautiful than even she had been. By the time she had reached twelve, the sneer in her eyes extended to her voice as she chided her for wearing track pants, a pony tail and no make-up. Her tension had became a poison in their relationship, Zoya putting a negative spin on all of her daughters behaviour and personality traits. Instead of striving to help her move forwards in life with confidence she did quite the opposite, destroying her self confidence one carefully angled verbal blow at a time. It's a sad day when, as seven year old, Pez had learned to give up trying to please her.

To put it shortly, she was one of the worst kind of people in the world, which proves Pez' theory that the worst people have all the luck. Her own parents had spoiled her rotten, and by the time she was five, Zoya had enough money in a trustee account to buy a plane. She never had any aspirations in life, instead spending high fooling around and getting by using her parent money and influence. Then her father decided to run for some big-shot political position, and after he got elected, there was no need for her to go to university. She had money, she had her parents, and she had their reputation to flaunt and bully people with.

The only bad break she ever got was meeting Pez's father and getting knocked up with her.

The girl doesn't have any memories of him, as according to her mother, it had been a one-night stand – with protection at that – and he had no idea she even existed. Zoya doesn't like to talk about him because it made her angry. Pez loved shove her fuck-up in her face.

She loved to point out to her step-father that Zoya used to be – and still is – a very loose woman. On one particular explosive evening, her mother had shouted at her that Pez's 'sperm donor' was a hideous and unimportant swine, and she just the same. That she wished she had never met the man and gotten saddled with a snot-nosed brat of a child.

Pez had then proceeded to remind her that she was the one that – in all ways imaginable – had opened up wide for such a 'hideous and unimportant swine'.

She'd gotten slapped for that.

Zoya didn't work, and instead relied on the wealthy income of her husband and parents (yeah, still), and turned to a constant stream of nanny's to raise her daughter. She always complained and got mad. All the time. To be fair, Pez knew she wasn't an easy kid, but Zoya never even tried.

Then she had married Anton Chernov, who was nice for all of three seconds before he showed his true colours as a world-class dickweed. When she was young, Pez nick-named him Arrogant Anton. The guy had more love and interest in himself than that dud from that Greek story – the one that died because he spent all his time looking at his reflection.

_Moron._

Really, the two were made for each other.

But between the two of them, Pez's 'parents' made her life a living hell. There was a reason she actively skirted the line of getting expelled from school – anything was better than staying at 'home'. The way they treated her, the way Pez-

Pez felt her gut boil with acid the elevator dinged.

If she doesn't get friend of the year award, she's going to burn something.

. . . well, she'll burn something anyway, but she'll make sure that whatever it is holds significant sentimental value to someone she hates.

She exited the elevator and walked into the penthouse apartment, hoping that both adults would be away at some fancy luncheon. Unfortunately, Arrogant Anton was in the living room – if you could call the lavish, open plan room that. The television blared ESPN as he sat at the table, still in a suit, tap-tapping away at his computer.

Hardly looking up, he said around his cigar, "So, you're home."

"Where's Zoya?"

Pez recused to call the bitch 'mother'.

"With friends," he said. "Why do you care?"

That was it. No 'Welcome back'. 'Good to see you'. 'How has your life been the last six months?'

Anton had put on weight. It made his suit a snug fit, something that she would normally point out – but she didn't have the time. His strawberry blonde hair already had minuscule stripes of grey – cough, white – which, despite his insistence, did not make him any wiser or more handsome in appearance. It just looked plain pathetic.

He was this CEO person of some big-shot marketing company in Lower Manhattan, and – thankfully – was never really home until evening. He wasn't really that smart, so she didn't know why they thought the idiot hung the moon. In reality, he was very bland, wasn't all that special and had a tendency to stare too long at Pez. But as long as he kept on collecting pay checks and spending the money on lavish gifts and expensive restaurants, Zoya didn't care. Pez was just lucky at this point that the guy hadn't gotten past merely looking. Of course, he had tried, once, before she had left for Yancy. However, she had strongly advised him against it.

Meaning, she threatened to skin him alive with a butter knife and force his mother to wear corpse as a suit.

Brutal, she knows.

It's one of her best qualities.

"I don't," she told him. He raised his head, barely able to stop giving her an appraising once over.

She glared at him.

He paled and turned back to his computer.

Tap-tappity tap tap.

Did she mention he was also a coward?

Not wanting to spend any more time than she absolutely had in the paradisiacal den of serpents, Pez rushed to her room, stuffing the bare essentials into a fairly sizeable canvas backpack.

"Where are you going?" he asked.

"Out."

"For how long?"

"A bit."

He eyed the amount of food she was stuffing into the bag. "It looks like you're going more than just 'out'. For longer that 'a bit' as well."

She didn't even grace him with a withering glare. "None of your business, _Anton_."

Before he could splutter out an indignant squawk, she was gone.

After all, she was a girl on a mission.

Things to burn and people to stalk.

* * *

|0.1|

* * *

In about an hour, Percy and his mother were ready to leave for Montauk beach.

Gabe took a break from his poker game long enough to watch him lug my mum's bags to the car. The fat sod kept griping and groaning about losing her cooking – and more important, his '78 Camaro-for the whole weekend.

"Not a scratch on this car, brain boy," he warned Percy as he loaded the last bag. "Not one little scratch."

Like he'd be the one driving. He was twelve. But that didn't matter to Gabe. If a seagull so much as pooped on his paint job, he'd find a way to blame Percy. He was tempted to let something happen – just to spite him . . .

Maybe he'd been spending too much time hanging with Pez.

Watching him lumber back toward the apartment building, the boy got so mad he did something he couldn't explain. As Gabe reached the doorway, Percy made the hand gesture he'd seen Grover make on the bus, a sort of warding-off-evil gesture, a clawed hand over his heart, then a shoving movement toward Gabe. The screen door slammed shut so hard it whacked him in the butt and sent him flying up the stair-case as if he'd been shot from a cannon. Maybe it was just the wind, or some freak accident with the hinges, but Percy didn't stay long enough to find out.

He got in the Camaro and told his mum to step on it.

Their rental cabin was on the south shore, way out at the tip of Long Island. It was a little pastel box with faded curtains, half sunken into the dunes. There was always sand in the sheets and spiders in the cabinets, and most of the time the sea was too cold to swim in.

Percy loved the place.

They'd been going there since he was a baby. His mum had been going even longer. She never exactly said, but he knew why the beach was special to her. It was the place where she'd met his dad.

As they got closer to Montauk, she seemed to grow younger, years of worry and work disappearing from her face. Her eyes turned the colour of the sea.

They got there at sunset, opened all the cabin's windows, and went through our usual cleaning routine. Mother and son walked on the beach, fed blue corn chips to the seagulls, and munched on blue jelly beans, blue saltwater taffy, and all the other free samples his mum had brought from work.

Percy guessed he should explain the blue food.

See, Gabe had once told his mum there was no such thing. They had this fight, which seemed like a really small thing at the time. But ever since, Sally Jackson went out of her way to eat blue. She baked blue birthday cakes. She mixed blueberry smoothies. She bought blue-corn tortilla chips and brought home blue candy from the shop. This – along with keeping her maiden name, Jackson, rather than calling herself Mrs. Ugliano – was proof that she wasn't totally suckered by Gabe. She did have a rebellious streak, like her son.

When it got dark, they made a fire and roasted hot dogs and marshmallows. His mum told him stories about when she was a kid, back before her parents died in the plane crash. She told him about the books she wanted to write someday, when she had enough money to quit the candy shop.

Eventually, Percy got up the nerve to ask about what was always on his mind whenever we came to Montauk – his father. Her eyes went all misty. He figured she would tell him the same things she always did, but he never got tired of hearing them.

"He was kind, Percy," she said. "Tall, handsome, and powerful. But gentle, too. You have his black hair, you know, and his green eyes."

She fished a blue jelly bean out of her candy bag. "I wish he could see you, Percy. He would be so proud."

Percy often wondered how she could say that. What was so great about him? A dyslexic, hyperactive boy with a D+ report card, kicked out of school for the sixth time in six years.

"How old was I?" he asked. "I mean . . . when he left?"

She watched the flames. "He was only with me for one summer, Percy. Right here at this beach. This cabin."

"But . . . he knew me as a baby."

"No, honey. He knew I was expecting a baby, but he never saw you. He had to leave before you were born."

Percy tried to square that with the fact that he seemed to remember . . . something about his father. A warm glow. A smile.

He had always assumed his father knew him as a baby. His mum had never said it outright, but still, he'd felt it must have been true. Now, to be told that he'd never even seen him . . .

He felt angry at his father. Perhaps it was stupid, but Percy resented him for going on that

ocean voyage, for not having the guts to marry his mum. He'd left them, and now they were stuck with Smelly Gabe.

"Are you going to send me away again?" He asked her. "To another boarding school?"

She pulled a marshmallow from the fire.

"I don't know, honey." Her voice was heavy. "I think . . . I think we'll have to do something."

"Because you don't want me around?" Percy regretted the words as soon as they were out.

He really _had_spent too much time with Pez – _far_too much.

His mum's eyes welled with tears. She took his hand, squeezed it tight. "Oh, Percy, no. I-I have to, honey. For your own good. I have to send you away."

Her words reminded him of what Mr. Brunner had said – that it was best for him to leave Yancy. "Because I'm not normal," he said.

"You say that as if it's a bad thing, Percy. But you don't realise how important you are. I thought Yancy Academy would be far enough away. I thought you'd finally be safe."

"Safe from what?"

She met his eyes, and a flood of memories came back to him – all the weird, scary things that had ever happened to him, some of which he'd tried to forget, others he had used as funny stories to tell to Pez – a competition of sorts the two had created.

During third grade, a man in a black trench coat had stalked Percy on the playground. When the teachers threatened to call the police, he went away growling, but no one believed him when he told them that under his broad-brimmed hat, the man only had one eye, right in the middle of his head.

Before that – a really early memory. He was in preschool, and a teacher accidentally put him down for a nap in a cot that a snake had slithered into. Him mum had screamed when she came to pick him up and found him playing with a limp, scaly rope he'd somehow managed to strangle to death with his meaty toddler hands.

Pez had loved that one in particular.

He felt a pang – he missed the crazy pyromaniac already.

In every single school, something creepy had happened, something unsafe, and he was forced to move.

He knew he should tell his mum about the old ladies at the fruit stand, and Mrs. Dodds at the art museum, about his weird hallucination that he had sliced his math teacher into dust with a sword. But he couldn't make himself tell her. He had a strange feeling the news would end their trip to Montauk, and he didn't want that.

"I've tried to keep you as close to me as I could," his mum said. "They told me that was a mistake. But there's only one other option, Percy-the place your father wanted to send you. And I just . . . I just can't stand to do it."

"My father wanted me to go to a special school?"

"Not a school," she said softly. "A summer camp."

Percy's head was spinning. Why would his dad – who hadn't even stayed around long enough to see him born – talk to his mum about a summer camp? And if it was so important, why hadn't she ever mentioned it before?

"I'm sorry, Percy," she said, seeing the look in his eyes. "But I can't talk about it. I-I couldn't send you to that place. It might mean saying good-bye to you for good."

"For good? But if it's only a summer camp . . ."

She turned toward the fire, and he knew from her expression that if he asked her any more questions she would start to cry.

* * *

|0.2|

* * *

That night Percy had a vivid dream.

It was storming on the beach, and two beautiful animals, a white horse and a golden eagle, were trying to kill each other at the edge of the surf. The eagle swooped down and slashed the horse's muzzle with its huge talons. The horse reared up and kicked at the eagles wings. As they fought, the ground rumbled, and a monstrous voice chuck-led somewhere beneath the earth, goading the animals to fight harder.

He ran toward them, knowing he had to stop them from killing each other, but he was running in slow motion. Percy knew he would be too late. He saw the eagle dive down, its beak aimed at the horse's wide eyes, and he screamed,

_No! _

He woke with a start.

Outside, it really was storming, the kind of storm that cracks trees and blows down houses. There was no horse or eagle on the beach, just lightning making false daylight, and twenty-foot waves pounding the dunes like artillery.

With the next thunderclap, his mum woke. She sat up, eyes wide, and said, "Hurricane."

Percy knew that was crazy. Long Island never saw hurricanes this early in the summer. But the ocean seemed to have forgotten. Over the roar of the wind, he heard a distant bellow, an angry, tortured sound that made his hair stand on end.

Then a much closer noise, like mallets in the sand. A desperate voice-someone yelling, pounding on their cabin door.

His mother sprang out of bed in her nightgown and threw open the lock.

Grover stood framed in the doorway against a backdrop of pouring rain. But he wasn't . . . he wasn't exactly Grover.

"Searching all night," he gasped. "What were you thinking?"

Percy's mother looked at him in terror – not scared of Grover, but of why he'd come.

"Percy," she said, shouting to be heard over the rain. "What happened at school? What didn't you tell me?"

But he was frozen, looking at Grover. He couldn't understand what he was seeing.

_"O Zeu kai alloi theoi!" _the other boy yelled. "It's right behind me! Didn't you tell her?"

Percy was too shocked to register that he'd just cursed in Ancient Greek, and he'd understood him perfectly. He was too shocked to wonder how Grover had gotten here by himself in the middle of the night. Because Grover didn't have his pants on – and where his legs should be . . . where his legs should be . . .

His mum looked at his sternly and talked in a tone she'd never used before: "Percy. Tell me now!"

Frightened, he stammered something about the old ladies at the fruit stand, and Mrs. Dodds, and his mum stared at him, her face deathly pale in the flashes of lightning.

She grabbed her purse, tossed me Percy rain jacket, and said, "Get to the car. Both of you. Go!"

Grover ran for the Camaro - but he wasn't running, exactly. He was trotting, shaking his shaggy hindquarters, and suddenly his story about a muscular disorder in his legs made sense to me. Percy understood how he could run so fast and still limp when he walked.

Because where his feet should be, there were no feet.

There were only cloven hooves.


	4. Chapter 4

**4\. Farmyard Fun**

* * *

Percy, his mother and Grover tore through the night along dark country roads, wind slamming against the Camaro, rain lashing the windshield. The boy didn't know how his mum could see anything, but she kept her foot on the gas.

Every time there was a flash of lightning, Percy looked at Grover sitting next to him in the backseat and he wondered if he'd gone insane, or if his friend was wearing some kind of shag-carpet pants. But, no, the smell was one he remembered from kindergarten field trips to the petting zoo- lanolin, like from wool.

The smell of a wet barnyard animal.

All he could think to say was, "So, you and my mum . . . know each other?"

Graver's eyes flitted to the rear-view mirror, though there were no cars behind us. "Not exactly," he said. "I mean, we've never met in person. But she knew I was watching you."

"Watching me?"

"Keeping tabs on you. Making sure you were okay. But I wasn't faking being your friend," he added hastily. "I am your friend."

"Urn . . . what are you, exactly?"

"That doesn't matter right now."

"It doesn't matter? From the waist down, my best friend is a donkey-"

Grover let out a sharp, throaty "Blaa-ha-ha!"

Percy had heard him make that sound before, but he'd always assumed it was a nervous laugh. Now he realised it was more of an irritated bleat.

"Goat!" the other boy cried.

"What?"

"I'm a goat from the waist down."

"You just said it didn't matter."

"Blaa-ha-ha! There are satyrs who would trample you under _hoof_for such an insult!"

"Whoa. Wait. Satyrs. You mean like . . . Mr. Brunner's myths?"

"Were those old ladies at the fruit stand a myth, Percy? Was Mrs. Dodds a myth?"

"So you admit there was a Mrs. Dodds!"

"Of course."

"Then why-"

"The less you knew, the fewer monsters you'd attract," Grover said, like that should be perfectly obvious. "We put Mist over the humans' eyes. We hoped you'd think the Kindly One was a hallucination. But it was no good. You started to realise who you are." He then mutter to himself; "It didn't help that Pez was encouraging you."

"Who I-wait a minute, what do you mean?"

The weird bellowing noise rose up again somewhere behind them, closer than before. Whatever was chasing them was still on their trail.

"Percy," his mum said, "there's too much to explain and not enough time. We have to get you to safety."

"Safety from what? Who's after me?"

"Oh, nobody much," Grover said, obviously still miffed about the donkey comment. "Just the Lord of the Dead and a few of his blood-thirstiest minions."

"Grover!"

"Sorry, Mrs. Jackson. Could you drive faster, please?"

Percy tried to wrap his mind around what was happening, but he couldn't do it. He knew this wasn't a dream. Pez was the one with the vivid imagination, not him. He could never dream up something this weird.

His mum made a hard left. They swerved onto a narrower road, racing past darkened farmhouses and wooded hills and **PICK YOUR OWN STRAWBERRIES **signs on white picket fences.

Pez would've loved that.

"Where are we going?" Percy asked, forcing himself to think in the present.

"The summer camp I told you about." His mother's voice was tight; she was trying for her son's sake not to be scared. "The place your father wanted to send you."

"The place you didn't want me to go."

"Please, dear," his mother begged. "This is hard enough. Try to understand. You're in danger."

"Because some old ladies cut yarn."

"Those weren't old ladies," Grover said. "Those were the Fates. Do you know what it means-the fact they appeared in front of you? They only do that when you're about to . . . when someone's about to die."

Percy's stomach dropped.

"Whoa. You said 'you.'"

"No I didn't. I said 'someone.'"

"You meant 'you.' As in me."

"I meant you, like 'someone.' Not you, you."

"Boys!" Mrs. Jackson said.

She pulled the wheel hard to the right, and Percy got a glimpse of a figure she'd swerved to avoid – a dark fluttering shape now lost behind us in the storm.

"What was that?" he asked.

"We're almost there," his mother said, ignoring the question. "Another mile. Please. Please. Please."

He didn't know where 'there' was, but Percy found himself leaning forward in the car, anticipating, wanting to arrive quicker.

Outside, nothing but rain and darkness – the kind of empty countryside you get way out on the tip of Long Island. The green eyed boy thought about Mrs. Dodds and the moment when she'd changed into the thing with pointed teeth and leathery wings. His limbs went numb from delayed shock. She really hadn't been human. She'd meant to kill him.

Then he thought about Mr. Brunner . . . and the sword he had thrown him. Before he could ask Grover about that, the hair rose on the back of his neck. There was a blinding flash, a jaw-rattling _boom!_, and the car exploded.

Percy remembered feeling weightless, like he was being crushed, fried, and hosed down all at the same time. He peeled his forehead off the back of the driver's seat and said, "Ow."

"Percy!" his mum shouted.

"I'm okay . . ."

He tried to shake off the daze. He wasn't dead. The car hadn't really exploded. They'd swerved into a ditch. The driver's-side doors were wedged in the mud. The roof had cracked open like an eggshell and rain was pouring in.

Lightning. That was the only explanation.

They'd been blasted right off the road.

Next to him in the backseat was a big motionless lump. "Grover!"

He was slumped over, blood trickling from the side of his mouth. Percy shook his furry hip, thinking, _No! Even if he ishalf barnyard animal, he's my best friend and I don't want himto die! _

Then he groaned "Food," and Percy knew there was hope.

"Percy," his mother said, "we have to . . ."

Her voice faltered.

Percy looked behind him.

In a flash of lightning, through the mud-spattered rear windshield, he saw a figure lumbering toward them on the shoulder of the road. The sight of it made his skin crawl. It was a dark silhouette of a huge guy, like a football player. He seemed to be holding a blanket over his head. His top half was bulky and fuzzy. His upraised hands made it look like he had horns.

Percy swallowed hard. "Who is-"

"Percy," his mother said, deadly serious. "Get out of the car."

Sally Jackson threw herself against the driver's-side door. It was jammed shut in the mud. Percy tried his. Stuck too. He looked up desperately at the hole in the roof. It might've been an exit, but the edges were sizzling and smoking.

"Climb out the passenger's side!" his mother told him. "Percy-you have to run. Do you see that big tree?"

"What?"

Another flash of lightning, and through the smoking hole in the roof he saw the tree she meant: a huge, White House Christmas tree-sized pine at the crest of the nearest hill.

"That's the property line," his mum said. "Get over that hill and you'll see a big farmhouse down in the valley. Run and don't look back. Yell for help. Don't stop until you reach the door."

"Mum, you're coming too."

Her face was pale, her eyes as sad as when she looked at the ocean.

"No!" he shouted. "You are coming with me. Help me carry Grover."

"Food!" Grover moaned, a little louder.

The man with the blanket on his head kept coming toward them, making his grunting, snorting noises. As he got closer, Percy realised he couldn't be holding a blanket over his head, because his hands – huge meaty hands – were swinging at his sides. There was no blanket. Meaning the bulky, fuzzy mass that was too big to be his head . . . was his head. And the points that looked like horns . . .

"He doesn't want us," his mother told him. "He wants you. Besides, I can't cross the property line."

"But . . ."

"We don't have time, Percy. Go. Please."

Percy got mad, then – mad at his mother, at Grover the goat, at Pez for not checking that maybe – just _maybe_– he wanted to hand out with her when they split from Grover, and he was mad at the thing with horns that was lumbering toward us slowly and deliberately like, like a bull.

He climbed across Grover and pushed the door open into the rain. "We're going together. Come on, mum."

"I told you-"

"Mum! I am not leaving you. Help me with Grover."

Percy didn't wait for her answer. He scrambled outside, dragging Grover from the car. He was surprisingly light, but Percy couldn't have carried him very far if his mum hadn't come to his aid.

Together, mother and son draped Grover's arms over their shoulders and started stumbling uphill through wet waist-high grass.

Glancing back, Percy got his first clear look at the monster. It was seven feet tall, easy, it's arms and legs like something from the cover of Muscle Man magazine-bulging biceps and triceps and a bunch of other 'ceps, all stuffed like baseballs under vein-webbed skin. It wore no clothes except under-wear – bright white Fruit of the Looms – which would've looked funny, except that the top half of it's body was so scary. Coarse brown hair started at about his belly button and got thicker as it reached it's shoulders.

It's neck was a mass of muscle and fur leading up to it's enormous head, which had a snout as long as Percy's arm, snotty nostrils with a gleaming brass ring, cruel black eyes, and horns – enormous black and white horns with points that not even an electric sharpener could get.

I recognised the monster, all right. It had been in one of the first stories Mr. Brunner told us. But it couldn't be real.

Percy blinked the rain out of my eyes. "That's-"

"Pasiphae's son," he mother said. "I wish I'd known how badly they want to kill you."

"But he's the Min-"

"Don't say his name," she warned. "Names have power."

The pine tree was still way too far - a hundred yards uphill at least.

Percy glanced behind him again.

The bull-man hunched over their car, looking in the windows – or not looking, exactly. More like snuffling, nuzzling. Percy wasn't sure why he bothered, since they were only about fifty feet away.

"Food?" Grover moaned.

"Shhh," He told the other boy. "Mum, what's he doing? Doesn't he see us?"

"His sight and hearing are terrible," she said. "He goes by smell. But he'll figure out where we are soon enough."

As if on cue, the bull-man bellowed in rage. He picked up Gabe's Camaro by the torn roof, the chassis creaking and groaning. He raised the car over his head and threw it down the road. It slammed into the wet asphalt and skidded in a shower of sparks for about half a mile before coming to a stop.

Not a scratch, Percy remembered Gabe saying.

Oops.

The gas tank exploded.

Pez would've been impressed.

_Double oops._

"Percy," his mum said. "When he sees us, he'll charge. Wait until the last second, then jump out of the way- directly sideways. He can't change directions very well once he's charging. Do you understand?"

"How do you know all this?"

"I've been worried about an attack for a long time. I should have expected this. I was selfish, keeping you near me."

"Keeping me near you? But-"

Another bellow of rage, and the bull-man started tromping uphill. He'd smelled them.

The pine tree was only a few more yards, but the hill was getting steeper and slicker, and Grover wasn't getting any lighter.

The bull-man closed in. Another few seconds and he'd be on top of the trio.

My mother must've been exhausted, but she shouldered Grover. "Go, Percy! Separate! Remember what I said."

Percy didn't want to split up, but he had the feeling she was right – it was their only chance. He sprinted to the left, turned, and saw the creature bearing down on him. His black eyes glowed with hate. He reeked like rotten meat.

He lowered his head and charged, those razor-sharp horns aimed straight at Percy's chest.

The fear in his stomach made him want to bolt, but that wouldn't work. He could never outrun this thing. So he held my ground, and at the last moment, he jumped to the side.

The bull-man stormed past like a freight train, then bellowed with frustration and turned, but not toward Percy this time, toward his mother, who was setting Grover down in the grass.

They'd reached the crest of the hill. Down the other side Percy could see a valley, just as his mother had said, and the lights of a farmhouse glowing yellow through the rain. But that was half a mile away.

They'd never make it.

The bull-man grunted, pawing the ground. He kept eyeing Percy's mother, who was now retreating slowly downhill, back toward the road, trying to lead the monster away from Grover.

"Run, Percy!" she told her son. "I can't go any farther. Run!"

But Percy just stood there, frozen in fear, as the monster charged her. She tried to sidestep, as she'd told him to do, but the monster had learned his lesson. His hand shot out and grabbed her by the neck as she tried to get away. He lifted her as she struggled, kicking and pummelling the air.

"Mum!"

She caught his eyes, managed to choke out one last word: "Go!"

Then, with an angry roar, the monster closed his fists around Sally Jackson's neck, and she dissolved before Percy's eyes, melting into light, a shimmering golden form, as if she were a holographic projection. A blinding flash, and she was simply . . . gone.

"No!"

Anger replaced Percy's fear. Newfound strength burned in his limbs-the same rush of energy he'd gotten when Mrs. Dodds grew talons.

The bull-man bore down on Grover, who lay helpless in the grass. The monster hunched over, snuffling Percy's best friend, as if he were about to lift Grover up and make him dissolve too.

The green eyed boy couldn't allow that.

He stripped off my red rain jacket.

"Hey!" he screamed, waving the jacket, running to one side of the monster. "Hey, stupid! Ground beef!"

**"Raaaarrrrr!"** The monster turned toward him, shaking his meaty fists.

Percy had an idea – a stupid idea, one that would get him a smack upside the head from Pez, but it was better than no idea at all. He put his back to the big pine tree and waved his red jacket in front of the bull-man, thinking he's jump out of the way at the last moment.

But it didn't happen like that.

The bull-man charged too fast, his arms out to grab the boy whichever way he tried to dodge.

Time slowed down.

Percy's legs tensed. He couldn't jump sideways, so he straight up, kicking off from the creature's head, using it as a springboard, turning in midair, and landing on his neck.

_How did I do that? _Percy didn't have time to figure it out. A millisecond later, the monster's head slammed into the tree and the impact nearly knocked the boy's teeth out.

The bull-man staggered around, trying to shake him. Percy locked his arms around the bull-man's horns to keep from being thrown. Thunder and lightning were still going strong. The rain was in his eyes. The smell of rotten meat burned his nostrils.

The monster shook himself around and bucked like a rodeo bull. He should have just backed up into the tree and smashed the boy flat, but Percy was starting to realise that this thing had only one gear: forward.

Meanwhile, Grover started groaning in the grass. Percy wanted to yell at him to shut up, but the way he was getting tossed around, if he opened my mouth he'd bite his own tongue off.

"Food!" Grover moaned.

The bull-man wheeled toward him, pawed the ground again, and got ready to charge. Percy thought about how he had squeezed the life out of his mother, made her disappear in a flash of light, and rage filled him like high-octane fuel. He got both hands around one horn and pulled backward with all his might. The monster tensed, gave a surprised grunt, then – _snap! _

The bull-man screamed and flung Percy through the air. He landed flat on his back in the grass. His head smacked against a rock. When he sat up, his vision was blurry, but he had a horn in his hands, a ragged bone weapon the size of a knife.

The monster charged.

Without thinking, Percy rolled to one side and came up kneeling. As the monster barrelled past, the terrified boy drove the broken horn straight into his side, right up under his furry rib cage.

The bull-man roared in agony. He flailed, clawing at his chest, then began to disintegrate-not like Percy's mother, in a flash of golden light, but like crumbling sand, blown away in chunks by the wind, the same way Mrs. Dodds had burst apart.

The monster was gone.

The rain had stopped. The storm still rumbled, but only in the distance. Percy smelled like livestock and his knees were shaking. His head felt like it was splitting open. He was weak and scared and trembling with grief he'd just seen his mother vanish. He just wanted to lie down and cry, but there was Grover, needing his help, so he managed to haul him up and stagger down into the valley, toward the lights of the farm-house. He was crying, calling for his mother, but he held on to Grover – he wasn't going to let him go.

But he fell, just before the edge of the lights.

Black fog invaded his vision, the pitter-patter of rain simultaneously fading away and getting louder.

He was about to lose complete consciousness, when he heard a voice.

"Get up."

_I . . _

"Please, you have to get up."

_. . . can't_

Something reached under him, hands hooking around his arms as they pulled.

"Get. Up."

Percy blinked, and suddenly he was collapsing on a wooden porch, looking up at a ceiling fan circling above him, moths flying around a yellow light, and the stern faces of a familiar-looking bearded man and a pretty girl, her blond hair curled like a princess's. They both looked down at the boy, and the girl said, "He's the one. He must be."

"Silence, Annabeth," the man said. "He's still conscious. Bring him inside."

As his head lolled limply to the side, last thing Percy remembered was a pair of dark eyes, staring at him from the open doorway, unnoticed by the two strangers. They were like two pristine stones of onyx, not soulless nor lifeless, that lit up with a purple flare when touched by the warm light of the house.

Beautiful.

**Deadly.**

Percy succumbed to the darkness.


	5. Chapter 5

**5\. A Goat, a Horse and a Spy**

* * *

The dappled shade of the woodland trees had seemed so inviting only hours earlier.

Pez was revaluating her previous assessment.

She had spent the entire night – no sleep for her – crouching uncomfortably on a thick – worryingly high – tree branch, cramped awkwardly among its friends in an effort to not fall out. The trees' deceivingly full foliage had not protected her from the pouring rain, and fat lot of use the rain was – it had failed to even deter the beetles, the moths or the weevils. Sharp bark digging into her back, clothes chaffing roughly, slightly delirious, cold and shivering to the bone . . . Pez was irritated and miserable.

Was she going to leave her post and go 'home'?

_No._

Why?

Because she had already spent 3 days dedicated to her mission, and to give up after all that would irritate her even more.

Besides, her target was in sight.

She shifted slightly, keen eyes zeroing in on the old man.

Dark orbs burned with suspicion.

When she had set out on her little journey of discovery, something had told her that it wouldn't take long for secrets to pull brought to forefront, and truths revealed. However, she hadn't expected said secrets to be revealed the very night she set out.

She also didn't quite expect there to be a giant bull monster chasing after her best friend, his mother and his friend as they fled from an exploding car. Nor did Pez expect there to be a whole camp of murder friendly children being trained by an old horse-man hybrid.

And yes, she said best friend.

Stop cooing and get over it. There are more important things to focus on.

After Jackson had vanished the monster, she had stealthily tailed him as he dragged – now apparently a half-sheep – Underwood from the battle ground. It was no wonder he collapsed before he reached the bottom steps of the farm-house like building.

He had looked so pitiful, lying there with one arm stretched out towards the lights.

Now that she thought about it, she really didn't need to bother with stealth – the boy was so exhausted she doubted he would even be able to react to an airhorn bursting his eardrums.

Reluctantly, Pez had left her perch, resigning herself to her decision to – reluctantly – place Jackson in the "Would _probably_save from certain death if it doesn't kill me" friend category.

As the old man and girl noticed Jackson and Underwood, Pez lingered for only a moment, enough to see Jackson briefly open his eyes. She booked it the moment the boy finally lost all consciousness. She had would've preferred to stay and defend him against the strangers, but he needed the help.

So, for now, Pez would watch and be patient.

For now, Pez would wait.

* * *

|0.1|

* * *

Percy had weird dreams full of barnyard animals and eyes. Most of the animals wanted to kill him. So did the eyes. The rest wanted food.

The animals, not the eyes.

He must've woken up several times, but what he heard and saw made no sense, so he just passed out again.

One time he swears he saw Pez.

But that was definitely a hallucination.

He remembered lying in a soft bed, being spoon-fed something that tasted like buttered popcorn, only it was pudding. The girl with curly blond hair hovered over him, smirking as she scraped drips off his chin with the spoon.

When she saw his eyes open, she asked, "What will happen at the summer solstice?"

Percy managed to croak, "What?"

She looked around, as if afraid someone would over-hear. "What's going on? What was stolen? We've only got a few weeks!"

"I'm sorry," he mumbled, "I don't . . ."

Somebody knocked on the door, and the girl quickly filled Percy's mouth with pudding.

The next time he woke up, the girl was gone.

A husky blond dude, like a surfer, stood in the corner of the bedroom keeping watch over me. He had blue eyes- at least a dozen of them-on his cheeks, his forehead, the backs of his hands.

Suffice to say, Percy passed out again.

* * *

|0.2|

* * *

When he finally came around for good, there was nothing weird about his surroundings, except that they were nicer than he was used to. He was sitting in a deck chair on a huge porch, gazing across a meadow at green hills in the distance. The breeze smelled like strawberries. There was a blanket over his legs, a pillow behind his neck. All that was great, but his mouth felt like a scorpion had been using it for a nest. His tongue was dry and nasty and every one of his teeth hurt.

On the table next to him was a tall drink. It looked like iced apple juice, with a green straw and a paper parasol stuck through a maraschino cherry.

Percy's hand was so weak he almost dropped the glass once he got his fingers around it.

"Careful," a familiar voice said.

Grover was leaning against the porch railing, looking like he hadn't slept in a week. Under one arm, he cradled a shoe box. He was wearing blue jeans, Converse hi-tops and a bright orange T-shirt that said **CAMP HALF-BLOOD**. Just plain old Grover.

Not the goat boy.

So maybe he'd had a nightmare. Maybe his mum was okay. We were still on vacation, and we'd stopped here at this big house for some reason. And . . .

"You saved my life," Grover said. "I . . . well, the least I could do . . . I went back to the hill. I thought you might want this."

Reverently, he placed the shoe box in Percy's lap.

Inside was a black-and-white bull's horn, the base jagged from being broken off, the tip splattered with dried blood. It hadn't been a nightmare.

"The Minotaur," Percy said.

"Um, Percy, it isn't a good idea-"

"That's what they call him in the Greek myths, isn't it?" the chair ridden boy demanded. "The Minotaur. Half man, half bull." Grover shifted uncomfortably. "You've been out for two days. How much do you remember?"

"My mum. Is she really . . ."

He looked down.

Percy stared across the meadow. There were groves of trees, a winding stream, acres of strawberries spread out under the blue sky. The valley was surrounded by rolling hills, and the tallest one, directly in front of us, was the one with the huge pine tree on top. Even that looked beautiful in the sunlight.

His mother was gone. The whole world should be black and cold. Nothing should look beautiful. "I'm sorry," Grover sniffled. "I'm a failure. I'm-I'm the worst satyr in the world."

He moaned, stomping his foot so hard it came off. The Converse hi-top came off, not his actual foot. The inside was filled with Styrofoam, except for a hoof-shaped hole.

"Oh, Styx!" he mumbled.

Thunder rolled across the clear sky.

As he struggled to get his hoof back in the fake foot, Percy thought, _Well, that settles it._

Grover was a satyr. Percy was ready to bet that if he shaved his friend's curly brown hair, he'd find tiny horns on his head. But he was too miserable to care that satyrs existed, or even minotaurs. All that meant was his mum really had been squeezed into nothingness, dissolved into yellow light.

Percy was alone. An orphan. He would have to live with . . . Smelly Gabe? No. That would never happen. He would live on the streets first. He would pretend he was seventeen and join the army. He'd do something. Maybe Pez would let him live in her massive penthouse.

. . . no, she'd probably just set on fire for even asking.

Grover was still sniffling. The poor kid–poor goat, satyr, whatever-looked as if he expected to be hit.

Percy said, "It wasn't your fault."

"Yes, it was. I was supposed to protect you."

"Did my mother ask you to protect me?"

"No. But that's my job. I'm a keeper. At least . . . I was."

"But why . . ." Percy suddenly felt dizzy, his vision swimming.

"Don't strain yourself," Grover said. "Here." He helped the other boy hold his glass and put the straw to his lips.

Percy recoiled at the taste, because he was expecting apple juice. It wasn't that at all. It was chocolate-chip cookies. Liquid cookies. And not just any cookies – his mum's homemade blue chocolate-chip cookies, buttery and hot, with the chips still melting. Drinking it, his whole body felt warm and good, full of energy. His grief didn't go away, but it felt as if his mum had just brushed her hand against his cheek, given him a cookie the way she used to when he was small, and told him everything was going to be okay.

Before Percy knew it, he had drained the glass. He stared into it, sure he'd just had a warm drink, but the ice cubes hadn't even melted.

"Was it good?" Grover asked.

He nodded.

"What did it taste like?" He sounded so wistful; Percy felt guilty.

"Sorry," he said. "I should've let you taste."

Grover's eyes got wide. "No! That's not what I meant. I just... wondered."

"Chocolate-chip cookies," Percy replied. "My mum's. Home-made."

The other boy -satyr- sighed. "And how do you feel?"

"Like I could throw Nancy Bobofit a hundred yards."

"That's good," he said. "That's good. I don't think you could risk drinking any more of that stuff"

"What do you mean?"

He took the empty glass from Percy gingerly, as if it were dynamite, and set it back on the table. "Come on. Chiron and Mr. D are waiting."

The porch wrapped all the way around the farmhouse.

His legs felt wobbly, trying to walk that far. Grover offered to carry the Minotaur horn, but Percy held on to it. He'd paid for that souvenir the hard way. He wasn't going to let it go. As they came around the opposite end of the house, he caught his breath.

They must've been on the north shore of Long Island, because on this side of the house, the valley marched all the way up to the water, which glittered about a mile in the distance. Between here and there, Percy simply couldn't process everything he was seeing. The landscape was dotted with buildings that looked like ancient Greek architecture-an open-air pavilion, an amphitheatre, a circular arena-except that they all looked brand new, their white marble columns sparkling in the sun.

In a nearby sandpit, a dozen high school-age kids and satyrs played volleyball. Canoes glided across a small lake. Kids in bright orange T-shirts like Grover's were chasing each other around a cluster of cabins nestled in the woods. Some shot targets at an archery range. Others rode horses down a wooded trail, and, unless he was hallucinating, some of their horses had wings. For a moment, Percy could've sworn that he caught a glance of someone – or something – in the corner of his eye, but there was nothing there when he turned.

Pez was incredibly relieved when Jackson dismissed her presence in favour for following Grover.

He could be annoying observant when he wanted to be.

Shaking his head, Percy looked down at the end of the porch, two men sat across from each other at a card table. The blond-haired girl who'd spoon-fed Percy popcorn-flavoured pudding was leaning on the porch rail next to them.

The man facing Percy was small, but porky. He had a red nose, big watery eyes, and curly hair so black it was almost purple. He looked like those paintings of baby angels- what do you call them, hubbubs? No, cherubs. That's it. He looked like a cherub who'd turned middle-aged in a trailer park. He wore a tiger-pattern Hawaiian shirt, and he would've fit right in at one of Gabe's poker parties, except Percy got the feeling this guy could've out-gambled even his step-father.

"That's Mr. D," Grover murmured to the other boy. "He's the camp director. Be polite. The girl, that's Annabeth Chase. She's just a camper, but she's been here longer than just about anybody. And you already know Chiron . . ."

He pointed at the guy whose back was to them.

First, Percy realized he was sitting in the wheelchair. Then he recognized the tweed jacket, the thinning brown hair, the scraggly beard.

"Mr. Brunner!" Percy cried.

The Latin teacher turned and smiled at him. His eyes had that mischievous glint they sometimes got in class when he pulled a pop quiz and made all the multiple-choice answers B.

"Ah, good, Percy," he said. "Now we have four for pinochle."

He offered the boy a chair to the right of Mr. D, who looked at him with bloodshot eyes and heaved a great sigh. "Oh, I suppose I must say it. Welcome to Camp Half-Blood. There. Now, don't expect me to be glad to see you."

"Uh, thanks." Percy scooted a little farther away from him because, if there was one thing he had learned from living with Gabe, it was how to tell when an adult has been hitting the happy juice. If Mr. D was a stranger to alcohol, Pez had never played with fire.

"Annabeth?" Mr. Brunner called to the blond girl.

She came forward and Mr. Brunner introduced her. "This young lady nursed you back to health, Percy. Annabeth, my dear, why don't you go check on Percy's bunk? We'll be putting him in cabin eleven for now."

Annabeth said, "Sure, Chiron."

She was probably his age, maybe a couple of inches taller, and a whole lot more athletic looking. With her deep tan and her curly blond hair, she was almost exactly what Percy thought a stereotypical California girl would look like, except her eyes ruined the image. They were startling grey, like storm clouds; pretty, but intimidating, too, as if she were analysing the best way to take him down in a fight.

She glanced at the minotaur horn in Percy's hands, then back at him. He imagined she was going to say, 'You killed a minotaur!' or 'Wow, you're so awesome!' or something like that.

Instead she said, "You drool when you sleep."

Then she sprinted off down the lawn, her blond hair flying behind her.

Percy thought he heard someone snicker, but he dismissed it in favour of ignoring the entire situation happened.

"So," He said, anxious to change the subject. "You, uh, work here, Mr. Brunner?"

"Not Mr. Brunner," the ex-Mr. Brunner said. "I'm afraid that was a pseudonym. You may call me Chiron."

"Okay." Totally confused, he looked at the director. "And Mr. D . . . does that stand for something?"

Mr. D stopped shuffling the cards. He looked at Percy like he'd just belched loudly. "Young man, names are powerful things. You don't just go around using them for no reason."

"Oh. Right. Sorry."

"I must say, Percy," Chiron -Brunner- broke in, "I'm glad to see you alive. It's been a long time since I've made a house call to a potential camper. I'd hate to think I've wasted my time."

"House call?"

"My year at Yancy Academy, to instruct you. We have satyrs at most schools, of course, keeping a lookout. But Grover alerted me as soon as he met you. He sensed you were something special, so I decided to come upstate. I convinced the other Latin teacher to . . . ah, take a leave of absence."

Percy tried to remember the beginning of the school year. It seemed like so long ago, but he did have a fuzzy memory of there being another Latin teacher my first week at Yancy. Then he had disappeared without explanation, and Mr. Brunner had taken the class.

"I assumed he left because Pez traumatised him or something?"

Not Mr. Brunner and Grover shared an uneasy glance, expertly concealing it from the boy.

"A likely enough conclusion, but no."

"You came to Yancy just to teach me?" Percy asked.

Alas, the boy had only **pretended** not notice the – frankly suspicious – glance between the two, and instead decided to file it away to examine later.

He had a lot of things he needs to examine later.

Chiron nodded. "Honestly, I wasn't sure about you at first. We contacted your mother, let her know we were keeping an eye on you in case you were ready for Camp Half-Blood. But you still had so much to learn. Nevertheless, you made it here alive, and that's always the first test."

"Grover," Mr. D said impatiently, "are you playing or not?"

"Yes, sir!" Grover trembled as he took the fourth chair, though Percy personally didn't know why he should be so afraid of a pudgy little man in a tiger-print Hawaiian shirt.

"You do know how to play pinochle?" Mr. D eyed the boy suspiciously.

"I'm afraid not," Percy said.

"I'm afraid not, sir," he said.

"Sir," Percy repeated. He was liking the camp director less and less.

_Pez would hate this guy._

Unbeknownst to Percy, said girl expertly eavesdropped on the meeting agreed with him, not guilty at all for coming to the conclusion that, yes, she did indeed 'hate this guy'.

Although, hate did seem like such a weak word.

She'd always liked the sound of 'abhor'.

"Well," Mr. D told Percy, "it is, along with gladiator fighting and Pac-Man, one of the greatest games ever invented by humans. I would expect all civilized young men to know the rules."

"I'm sure the boy can learn," Chiron said.

"Please," Percy said, "what is this place? What am I doing here? Mr. Brun -Chiron- why would you go to Yancy Academy just to teach me?"

Mr. D snorted. "I asked the same question." 

The camp director dealt the cards. Grover flinched every time one landed in his pile.

Chiron smiled at Percy sympathetically, the way he used to in Latin class, as if to let him know that no matter what my average was, he was his star student. He expected him to have the right answer.

"Percy," he said. "Did your mother tell you nothing?'

"She said . . ." Percy remembered her sad eyes, looking out over the sea. "She told me she was afraid to send me here, even though my father had wanted her to. She said that once I was here, I probably couldn't leave. She wanted to keep me close to her."

"Typical," Mr. D said. "That's how they usually get killed. Young man, are you bidding or not?"

_Prick_, Pez thought, irritation blooming in her fingers at the sight of Jackson's whiplashed expression.

"What?" Percy asked.

He explained, impatiently, how you bid in pinochle, and so Percy did.

"I'm afraid there's too much to tell," Chiron said. "I'm afraid our usual orientation film won't be sufficient."

"Orientation film?" He asked.

"No," Chiron decided. "Well, Percy. You know your friend Grover is a satyr. You know"-he pointed to the horn in the shoe box-"that you have killed the Minotaur. No small feat, either, lad. What you may not know is that great powers are at work in your life. Gods-the forces you call the Greek gods-are very much alive."

Percy stared at the others around the table.

He waited for somebody to yell, 'Not!' But all he got was Mr. D yelling, "Oh, a royal marriage. Trick! Trick!" He cackled as he tallied up his points.

"Mr. D," Grover asked timidly, "if you're not going to eat it, could I have your Diet Coke can?"

"Eh? Oh, all right." 

Grover bit a huge shard out of the empty aluminium can and chewed it mournfully. 

"Wait," Percy told Chiron. "You're telling me there's such a thing as God."

"Well, now," Chiron said. "God-capital G, God. That's a different matter altogether. We shan't deal with the metaphysical."

"Metaphysical? But you were just talking about-"

"Ah, gods, plural, as in, great beings that control the forces of nature and human endeavours: the immortal gods of Olympus. That's a smaller matter."

"Smaller?"

"Yes, quite. The gods we discussed in Latin class."

"Zeus," Percy said. "Hera. Apollo. You mean them."

And there it was again – distant thunder on a cloud-less day.

"Young man," said Mr. D, "I would really be less casual about throwing those names around, if I were you."

"But they're stories," Percy half-heartedly protested. "They're-myths, to explain lightning and the seasons and stuff. They're what people believed before there was science."

"Science!" Mr. D scoffed. "And tell me, Perseus Jackson" Percy flinched when he said his real name, which he never told anybody – of course, somehow Pez seemed to know it, "what will people think of your 'science' two thousand years from now?" Mr. D continued. "Hmm? They will call it primitive mumbo jumbo. That's what. Oh, I love mortals-they have absolutely no sense of perspective. They think they've come so-o-o far. And have they, Chiron? Look at this boy and tell me."

Percy wasn't liking Mr. D much, but there was something about the way he called him mortal, as if . . . he wasn't. It was enough to put a lump in his throat, to suggest why Grover was dutifully minding his cards, chewing his soda can, and keeping his mouth shut.

"Percy," Chiron said, "you may choose to believe or not, but the fact is that immortal means immortal. Can you imagine that for a moment, never dying? Never fading? Existing, just as you are, for all time?"

He was about to answer, off the top of his head, that it sounded like a pretty good deal, but the tone of Chiron's voice made him hesitate.

"You mean, whether people believed in you or not," Percy said instead.

"Exactly," Chiron agreed. "If you were a god, how would you like being called a myth, an old story to explain lightning? What if I told you, Perseus Jackson, that some-day people would call you a myth, just created to explain how little boys can get over losing their mothers?"

His heart pounded. Chiron was trying to make Percy angry for some reason, but he wasn't going to let him. He said, "I wouldn't like it. But I don't believe in gods."

"Oh, you'd better," Mr. D murmured. "Before one of them incinerates you."

Grover said, "P-please, sir. He's just lost his mother. He's in shock."

"A lucky thing, too," Mr. D grumbled, playing a card. "Bad enough I'm confined to this miserable job, working with boys who don't even believe.'"

He waved his hand and a goblet appeared on the table, as if the sunlight had bent, momentarily, and woven the air into glass. The goblet filled itself with red wine.

Percy's jaw dropped, but Chiron hardly looked up.

"Mr. D," he warned, "your restrictions."

Mr. D looked at the wine and feigned surprise.

"Dear me." He looked at the sky and yelled, "Old habits! Sorry!"

More thunder.

Mr. D waved his hand again, and the wineglass changed into a fresh can of Diet Coke. He sighed unhappily, popped the top of the soda, and went back to his card game.

Chiron winked at Percy. "Mr. D offended his father a while back, took a fancy to a wood nymph who had been declared off-limits."

"A wood nymph," the boy repeated, still staring at the Diet Coke can like it was from outer space.

"Yes," Mr. D confessed. "Father loves to punish me. The first time, Prohibition. Ghastly! Absolutely horrid ten years! The second time-well, she really was pretty, and I couldn't stay away-the second time, he sent me here. Half-Blood Hill. Summer camp for brats like you. 'Be a better influence,' he told me. 'Work with youths rather than tearing them down.' Ha.' Absolutely unfair."

Mr. D sounded about six years old, like a pouting little kid. "And . . ." Percy stammered, "your father is . . ."

"Di immortals, Chiron," Mr. D said. "I thought you taught this boy the basics. My father is Zeus, of course."

Percy ran through D names from Greek mythology. Wine. The skin of a tiger. The satyrs that all seemed to work here. The way Grover cringed, as if Mr. D were his master.

"You're Dionysus," he said. "The god of wine."

Mr. D rolled his eyes. "What do they say, these days, Grover? Do the children say, 'Well, duh!'?" "Y-yes, Mr. D."

"Then, well, duh! Percy Jackson. Did you think I was Aphrodite, perhaps?"

"You're a god."

"Yes, child."

"A god. You."

Pez flat-out glared at Jackson from her hiding place as the minor god turned to look at the boy straight on. Percy froze and saw a kind of purplish fire in his eyes, a hint that this whiny, plump little man was only showing him the tiniest bit of his true nature. He saw visions of grape vines choking unbelievers to death, drunken warriors insane with battle lust, sailors screaming as their hands turned to flippers, their faces elongating into dolphin snouts. Percy knew that if he pushed him, Mr. D would show him worse things. He would plant a disease in his brain that would leave him wearing a strait-jacket in a rubber room for the rest of his life.

Secretly – not that he would dare compliment Pez so (not to her face), nor directly insult Mr. D so (not to his face) – Percy still thought Pez was scarier. Something about spending more than half a year experiencing and observing her capabilities in the department of torment and torture. Suffice to say, not even a god could frighten him quite the way Pez can.

"Would you like to test me, child?" he said quietly.

"No. No, sir."

The fire died a little. He turned back to his card game. "I believe I win."

"Not quite, Mr. D," Chiron said. He set down a straight, tallied the points, and said, "The game goes to me."

Percy thought Mr. D was going to vaporize Chiron right out of his wheelchair, but he just sighed through his nose, as if he were used to being beaten by the Latin teacher. He got up, and Grover rose, too.

"I'm tired," Mr. D said. "I believe I'll take a nap before the sing-along tonight. But first, Grover, we need to talk, again, about your less-than-perfect performance on this assignment."

Grover's face beaded with sweat. "Y-yes, sir."

Mr. D turned to Percy. "Cabin eleven, Percy Jackson. And mind your manners."

He swept into the farmhouse, Grover following miserably.

"Will Grover be okay?" The boy asked Chiron.

Chiron nodded, though he looked a bit troubled. "Old Dionysus isn't really mad. He just hates his job. He's been . . . ah, grounded, I guess you would say, and he can't stand waiting another century before he's allowed to go back to Olympus."

"Mount Olympus," Percy said, and Pez eased in as close as she dared. "You're telling me there really is a palace there?"

"Well now, there's Mount Olympus in Greece. And then there's the home of the gods, the convergence point of their powers, which did indeed used to be on Mount Olympus. It's still called Mount Olympus, out of respect to the old ways, but the palace moves, Percy, just as the gods do."

"You mean the Greek gods are here? Like . . . in America?"

"Well, certainly. The gods move with the heart of the West."

"The what?"

"Come now, Percy. What you call 'Western civilization.' Do you think it's just an abstract concept? No, it's a living force. A collective consciousness that has burned bright for thousands of years. The gods are part of it. You might even say they are the source of it, or at least, they are tied so tightly to it that they couldn't possibly fade, not unless all of Western civilization were obliterated. The fire started in Greece. Then, as you well know-or as I hope you know, since you passed my course-the heart of the fire moved to Rome, and so did the gods. Oh, different names, perhaps-Jupiter for Zeus, Venus for Aphrodite, and so on-but the same forces, the same gods."

"And then they died."

"Died? No. Did the West die? The gods simply moved, to Germany, to France, to Spain, for a while. Wherever the flame was brightest, the gods were there. They spent several centuries in England. All you need to do is look at the architecture. People do not forget the gods. Every place they've ruled, for the last three thousand years, you can see them in paintings, in statues, on the most important buildings. And yes, Percy, of course they are now in your United States. Look at your symbol, the eagle of Zeus. Look at the statue of Prometheus in Rockefeller Centre, the Greek facades of your government buildings in Washington. I defy you to find any American city where the Olympians are not prominently displayed in multiple places. Like it or not-and believe me, plenty of people weren't very fond of Rome, either- America is now the heart of the flame. It is the great power of the West. And so, Olympus is here. And we are here."

Even Pez found her head spinning from that overload of information, and she felt slight sympathy for Jackson, who seemed to be included in Chiron's 'we', as if he were part of some club.

"Who are you, Chiron? Who . . . who am I?"

Chiron smiled. He shifted his weight as if he were going to get up out of his wheelchair, but Percy knew that was impossible. He was paralysed from the waist down.

Pez, however, had learned better in the past few days. She narrowed her eyes at the old man.

"Who are you?" Said old man mused. "Well, that's the question we all want answered, isn't it? But for now, we should get you a bunk in cabin eleven. There will be new friends to meet. And plenty of time for lessons tomorrow. Besides, there will be s'mores at the campfire tonight, and I simply adore chocolate."

And then he did rise from his wheelchair. But there was something odd about the way he did it. His blanket fell away from his legs, but the legs didn't move. His waist kept getting longer, rising above his belt. At first, Percy thought he was wearing very long, white velvet underwear, but as he kept rising out of the chair, taller than any man, Percy realized that the velvet underwear wasn't underwear; it was the front of an animal, muscle and sinew under coarse white fur. And the wheelchair wasn't a chair. It was some kind of container, an enormous box on wheels, and it must've been magic, because there's no way it could've held all of him. A leg came out, long and knobby-kneed, with a huge polished hoof. Then another front leg, then hindquarters, and then the box was empty, nothing but a metal shell with a couple of fake human legs attached.

It was one thing to know, and another thing entirely to see. Both Pez and Jackson stared at the horse who had just sprung from the wheelchair: a huge white stallion. But where its neck should be was the upper body of my Latin teacher, smoothly grafted to the horse's trunk.

"What a relief," the centaur said. "I'd been cooped up in there so long, my fetlocks had fallen asleep. Now, come, Percy Jackson. Let's meet the other campers."

Pez quickly tucked herself further away from the two as they left the house, only breathing once they were out of earshot.

For a moment, she waited, mind blank with the overload of information. Eventually, however, she reluctantly moved, sticking to the shadows as she followed Jackson and the Centaur on their tour through the camp.

_Someone has to save his arse from somehow falling into the lava pit._


End file.
